"Into The Great Unknown"
"The 'Book of Songs' tour goes to Russia"
Day 3
I had lots of
time today to prepare, practise, finalise the list of songs, eat, siesta and
have a great lunch with some of the show sponsors.
It is very
normal in Russia for shows to be sponsored commercially and this achieves two
main things ….
One, it
spreads the costs of presenting the show and Two, it helps to keep the ticket
price affordable in a country where average income is low in general and even
lower in the provincial cities.
As a side
benefit, it often means I get to eat in great restaurants!!
The venue was
a large theatre of about 1000 seats and they were expecting between 700 & 800
people which will be great.
I played here
in 2003 with some of my Spanish guys but that´s a rather distant memory at this
point!
Dima and Boris
learn quickly and we soon had the stage set up correctly and in time for sound
check.
In this solo
environment, sound check normally doesn´t take long and so there was time
afterwards to relax in the dressing room, change some guitar strings and
generally prepare for the first gig.
The big crowd
were really enthusiastic and the show went well. The Q&A session was fine once
they got started and, as I was leaving I had to stop and sign hundreds of things,
which is fine as one of the themes of this format is to get up close and
personal, no matter how much time it takes.
Then we had a
quick dinner and back to the hotel.
For a first
show it was really very satisfying and everyone seemed to really enjoy the
concept of the show, although I will make some minor presentation changes as we
go along, based on this experience.
